Author
Topic: New words vs. recycle words (Read 1613 times)

Question, why would Na'vi language have to re-use words much as we do in languages like English or Spanish where in Spanish pipa to smoke, pipa as in pipe, and pipa as in a truck to transport water or gas, or in English the same words pipe, pipe and pipe. wouldn't be better to have one word for each meaning?

Question, why would Na'vi language have to re-use words much as we do in languages like English or Spanish where in Spanish pipa to smoke, pipa as in pipe, and pipa as in a truck to transport water or gas, or in English the same words pipe, pipe and pipe. wouldn't be better to have one word for each meaning?

The real question is "why wouldn't it?" Natural languages are not perfectly orthogonal, with one single word having one single, well-defined and precise meaning. Metaphor is a deep and constant feature in natural human language, and is one of the things that leads to the expanded meaning of words. There's no reason to expect Na'vi to be different.

You are stating very good points which are based on the assumption that the Na'vi would behaved similar to humans on the creation and development of their own language; I believe that if we desire to develop the Na'vi language would be erroneous to based it in the fashion we develop our own languages, but on the other hand, we are the ones developing the Na'vi language and not the Na'vi.

Although it has been done with most conlangs afaik, but i think a language cannot be created from the scratch to 100% and then nailed down forever. The language needs to be used in real. Then you can see wich words or phrases are used in wich situations and on combination with wich words. With that information you can decide what needs a litte polish. One the one hand speakers can then change their usage, or on the other hand some of the grammar or words could be changed to fit better. (i think oe->we is an example)"reusing" words should be be done in later steps of an iterative process. There are many many syllables still available and homographs will come by its own. eg through all the plurals and adpositions or by combining+shortening words.Something that comes close to it:Tsaw ke lu somTsawke lu som

but for suggesting idioms and asking for grammatical possibilities it is maybe the right moment.

To make it short i would say that the language is not a static thing but an ongoing process with many recursive influences involved. We cannot create the language like it would have been developed on Pandora but we can try to emulate the developement from a predefined staringpoint wich is the Na'vi language as it is today.

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